Medical marijuana delivery service shut down by city of San Rafael

The city of San Rafael has forced a medical cannabis delivery service operating out of an office to close its doors.

The collective Caregiver Compassion Group, which closed Jan. 6, has been flying beneath the radar since moving into the office at 15 Woodland Ave. in 2011, after losing its lease in Sausalito. The San Rafael City Council adopted an ordinance in 1997 that states, "A medical marijuana dispensary is not an allowable use within any district of the city."

Two Sonoma County residents, Berta Bollinger and Donald Hatt, are co-presidents of Caregiver Compassion Group, a not-for-profit organization and medical cannabis collective with about 300 mostly Marin members.

"We've been medical cannabis patients for a number of years," Bollinger said. "We saw how it turned our lives around medically and have decided this is a viable and important thing that we are doing.

"We would like to continue doing it in the broad daylight instead of feeling like we're criminals," she said. "It's 2014, for God's sake. The law has been in effect since 1996, and we still can't figure this out?"

The law Bollinger is referring to is Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which legalized the use of marijuana in California for medical purposes. The initiative passed with a 55 percent majority vote.

Several Marin residents who were getting their cannabis via the Caregiver Compassion Group have written letters to the council asking it to lift its ban. San Rafael Mayor Gary Phillips could not be reached for comment.

Peter of Eliaser of Novato wrote that he is a quadriplegic who uses medical marijuana to seek relief from spasms caused by his chronic, progressive multiple sclerosis. Eliaser wrote that "the medical cannabis helps relieve the suffering. The city of San Rafael should allow for patients' bona fide use of medical cannabis, and consider rethinking their position in this matter."

Another Marin County resident, Mitch Stein, wrote, "I used to require significant pain medication for my condition, but can now alleviate my pain with a few puffs of marijuana in vapor form or a few bites of a cookie obtained legally from the good people at CCG."

Stein did not provide any detail regarding his medical condition.

San Rafael police Lt. Dan Fink said following "some community complaints," he assigned his plain-clothes street crimes team to check out Compassionate Caregiver's San Rafael office.

Bollinger said in October a plain-clothes officer came to the office and tried to join the collective using a medical cannabis card issued by a physician whose license had been revoked.

"We wouldn't let him in," Bollinger said. "About 10 minutes later, he came back with a whole contingency of other officers."

Fink, however, denied trying to run a sting on the delivery service.

"We sent one person in plain clothes to ask about purchasing marijuana," Fink said. "He didn't have a card. He simply asked, 'What's the procedure?'"

Fink said the undercover officer was admitted to an antechamber, but the officer never gained entry to the main office so Fink doesn't know if there was any cannabis on the premises.

"I can tell you when we were there talking to them there was an extremely strong smell of marijuana outside the gates of their business," Fink said. "I don't know if that is because they were smoking it in there or if they had product in there."

Fink said his undercover officer was told "they would sell to him there with a card or they would also do delivery."

Bollinger said, "No medicine was on-site here at the office. This was just to keep our computers going, punch in the sales, that kind of stuff. The medicine was coming from someplace else."

Bollinger said, however, that people would come to the office to sign up for the collective.

"We also did counseling here," she said. "It was place for people to come for feedback, information and support, but not to get medicine."

At one time there were at least half a dozen medical marijuana collectives dispensing cannabis out of Marin County storefronts. Following a crackdown by federal prosecutors in 2011, however, only one remains: Marin Holistic Solutions in Corte Madera. Corte Madera officials have indicated they will not allow Marin Holistic Solutions to continue operations after its lease expires later this summer.

It would appear, however, that Compassionate Caregiver Group may be just one of many medical marijuana delivery services operating in Marin.